RAW is Good: and I don't mean Sushi!

I was talking with a friend of mine when I had just switched over to digital and was asking about different settings. In particular RAW. I had no idea just coming from shooting film what that meant or why use it. My friend is an excellent photographer and was also at the time taking a course on digital photography. (A real course with homework, text book and real human instructor in a classroom.) She told me that the instructor made them shoot in RAW but she saw no need for it, it simply used up too much room on a memory card and there was no other advantage. In fact she went on to say, "After this course I'm going to shoot only in jpeg.

With that said I promptly set my new digital camera on jpeg and went off to some of the most beautiful places I've ever had the privilege to visit. I shot over 1000 pictures the first week I had the camera. But nothing came out very well and I couldn't seem to be able to edit my shots the way others were. I didn't understand. After my trip, I began to read up. (I wish I had researched while I was still out in the Pacific North West) I did an experiment I set my camera to shoot both Jpeg and RAW. Wow! it didn't take long for me to recognize the difference.

Here is an example of what you can do with a RAW image.

This image was taken at 4:00 or so in the afternoon. I did a couple of things. I shot in in RAW, I used the florescent setting for the white balance to get the blue hue and then I under exposed it. I also shot it with 400 ISO to give it some texture.

When I opened the image in the RAW converter I increased the blacks, a little bit of fill light and saturation. The sky was still pretty bright so I used the brush tool and lowered the exposure on the sky only and here is the resulting shot.

I shot this to use as a background for a composite picture I have in mind. But this shot alone looks pretty good to me and I didn't have to fool with it in photoshop, just the RAW conversion software. If you haven't already........... I would suggest you become familiar with this powerful tool.

Below is the original image without any adjustments in the RAW conversion software. Not so compelling a shot.

Till the next time: Have fun with Photography!

Laura